A staffer at left-wing Media Matters for America committed numerous felonies in the District of Columbia and around the country by carrying a firearm to defend the organization’s founder, David Brock, The Daily Caller has learned.

According to a knowledgeable source, multiple firearms used to protect the Media Matters founder were purchased with Brock’s blessing — and apparently with the group’s money.

TheDC has previously reported that Brock’s one-time aide, Haydn Price-Morris, carried a concealed Glock handgun as he traveled with the liberal leader to public events in Washington, D.C. (RELATED: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, Media Matters’ close coordination with White House and news organizations)

But the extent of Brock’s armed activities have been largely unknown until now, even among those closest to him. An array of current and former Media Matters sources, all with intimate knowledge about the inner workings of the organization, granted extensive interviews to TheDC.

Brock, whose struggles with mental health have seen him hospitalized in the past, became increasingly concerned by late 2010 that he was being targeted by right-wing assassins.

TheDC has learned that by that time, Brock had armed his assistant — who had no permit to carry a concealed firearm — with a Glock handgun.

According to an internal email exchange obtained by TheDC, the gun was purchased with cash in Maryland, likely to diminish the chances such a purchase would appear on the tax-exempt group’s books.

Between Price-Morris’ early 2009 arrival and late 2010 departure from Media Matters, he also acquired a shotgun for Brock’s protection.

Price-Morris was regularly armed when accompanying Brock on trips around the country, according to a source, and his firearm possession in Washington, D.C. constituted multiple felonies.

On at least one occasion, Brock — accompanied by his armed aide — visited California to attend a “Democracy Alliance” summit of major Democratic donors and lawmakers.

That gathering included such major figures in Democratic politics as billionaires George Soros, Peter Lewis and Bill Benter, former Service Employees International Union Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger, and the politician behind the federal government’s 1994 “Assault Weapons Ban,” California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

On Thursday, Feinstein re-introduced a new version of the ban which would reinstate and greatly expand the law, which expired in 2004. Reached Thursday, a spokesman for Feinstein did not respond to a request for comment related to the senator’s attendance, alongside Brock and Price-Morris, at the Democracy Alliance meeting.

Spokespersons for Soros and Benter did not reply to emailed requests for comment.

It’s unclear if Price-Morris was carrying his Media Matters-supplied Glock to that Democracy Alliance summit, but a well-placed source told TheDC he was carrying a concealed weapon at the event.

Brock’s aide was a “gun enthusiast,” according to the source, and often selected a weapon from his personal collection of firearms that would suit a given occasion and his taste. Price-Morris would occasionally carry a separate Glock that he owned personally, one with a high-capacity magazine — 17-rounds — if his outfit was loose enough to conceal the weapon.

Media Matters had reason to be concerned about news of its use of firearms becoming public. (RELATED: The Daily Caller’s complete coverage of Media Matters for America)

Aside from risking the disapproval or outrage of disenchanted anti-gun donors, it appears Media Matters personnel may have committed several serious crimes.

“If he carried it in DC, that’s a felony,” Stephen Halbrook, a D.C.-area lawyer with more than 35 years of experience practicing gun law nationwide, confirmed to TheDC.

“Any weapon [with] over 10 rounds is illegal under D.C. law,” said Halbrook of Price-Morris’ 17-round-capacity Glock. “And this is for mere possession. If you have a gun that’s unregistered, that’s another felony by the way.”

“If you’re carrying it around, you’re committing two crimes: one, the crime of carrying the firearm, and two, having it unregistered — the status of it being unregistered. Both of those would be felonies,” he explained.

“And then the ammunition can be a separate charge: If you don’t have a registered gun, then you can’t have ammunition in D.C.”

For carrying a fully-loaded Glock in Washington without a permit, Price-Morris “could be looking at some substantial prison time because if we use the low-end felony sentence of five years, you could get five years for the non-registration, five for the carrying, and then [more for] the second offenses of the magazine being over 10 rounds and then the cartridges,” said Halbrook.

Halbrook said Brock also risks facing criminal charges.

It could be considered a criminal “conspiracy,” Halbrook explained, “if they set up this arrangement and everything that was done was illegal. Then they would be a conspirator, or maybe an aider or abettor of a crime.”

Aside from Brock and Price-Morris, few at Media Matters knew Brock had armed his aide, according to multiple Media Matters sources.

One source described Brock as “very shy,” explaining that while Price-Morris was there, he rarely confided in anyone outside of his aide and two other people: then-Media Matters president Eric Burns and Brock’s longtime fundraiser, Mary Pat Bonner.

Burns has since started his own public relations firm and would not respond to TheDC’s requests for comment.

Bonner, who sources say now shares office space with Brock inside Media Matters, also did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Whether they were aware of the guns or not, Media Matters sources viewed Price-Morris as “very protective” of Brock.

Reflecting on an incident — previously reported by TheDC — where Price-Morris whisked his boss from the roof of Media Matters’ Washington headquarters for fear of “snipers,” one former staffer said Brock’s aide was “a strange kind of guy.”

“I think he [Price-Morris] worried more about David’s security than David worried about it,” she said.

She was one of several sources that expressed displeasure with Price-Morris’ demeanor, calling him a “loose cannon.”

“Haydn was another one of those people that nobody in the office really got along with,” she said.

He was “arrogant,” agreed another source, who said Price-Morris exuded a “sense of entitlement” exceptional even for Washington, D.C.

Many of Brock’s senior employees claim they were caught completely by surprise when in late 2010, staffers became aware of Price-Morris’ gun after he revealed his concealed weapon to a female employee.

One former senior employee told TheDC the Media Matters staff was “shocked” to learn of the gun. Another said the in-house reaction was “like, ‘Holy shit!’ It was so beyond what was acceptable.”

Speaking to TheDC, multiple Media Matters staffers described an atmosphere of confusion surrounding why Price-Morris had a gun when so much of the liberal organization’s work was aimed at restricting the public’s access to firearms.

In the aftermath of the December 14 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Media Matters has been on the gun control warpath, commissioning hundreds of pieces supportive of restrictions on firearms.

As one source put it, Brock was “terrified” that the gun story would get out.

“George Soros and a lot of groups connected to gun control are funding this group, and they wouldn’t be too happy that an employee of Media Matters was carrying a gun, especially when it was illegal in D.C.,” said the source.

The Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based philanthropy whose board of directors included Barack Obama from 1994 to 2002, awarded $400,000 to Media Matters for “a gun and public safety issue initiative” in 2010 — the same year the staff learned of Price-Morris’ gun. (RELATED: Left-wing foundations lavish millions on Media Matters)

A spokeswoman for the Joyce Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.

Likewise, the David Bohnett Foundation — started by Geocities co-founder David Bohnett — gave Media Matters $75,000 between 2010 and 2011, specifically for “gun safety” operations.

One former Media Matters staffer expressed disbelief that Brock could have approved of Price-Morris carrying a concealed weapon. “I can’t imagine David wouldn’t have known this wasn’t the type of thing that wouldn’t blow up in his face,” the source explained.

Despite Brock’s knowledge of the guns, his organization successfully laid the blame for the lapse in judgment at Price-Morris’ feet, and he was quickly let go.

Price-Morris disappeared from Washington, D.C. not long after, moving with his wife from their Annapolis, Md. home to Jersey City, N.J. — but not before returning the guns to Media Matters through a third party.

By the beginning of April 2011, Media Matters was scrambling to retrieve the weapons from Price-Morris. An email exchange obtained by TheDC shows that the group clearly had a stake in the weapons.

Matt Reents, a former senior Media Matters staffer, emailed Price-Morris on April 4, 2011 asking him to transfer ownership of a shotgun to a man named Robert Stewart. Reents also explained that the Glock would be surrendered to the police.

“MD [Maryland] law doesn’t require paperwork or registration when transferring a shotgun,” Reents emailed Price-Morris that Monday morning. “For our records, you will just need to sign a letter designating Robert Stewart as the new owner of the gun (I’ll send the letter to sign once Robert gives me the shotgun’s serial number to put in the letter).”

“Robert is also going to surrender the handgun to the police,” Reents continued. “As it was not registered, this will be straight-forward and won’t require any additional action on your part. If you have any purchase documentation on the handgun, let me know (it was purchased with cash, right?).”

"Chicago is like a house with two parents that may try to have good rules and do what they can, but it's like you've got this single house sitting on a whole block where there's anarchy. Chicago is an argument for laws that are statewide or better yet, national."REV. IRA J. ACREE, on a city that has strict firearms restrictions but is still plagued by gun violence

"Chicago is like a house with two parents that may try to have good rules and do what they can, but it's like you've got this single house sitting on a whole block where there's anarchy. Chicago is an argument for laws that are statewide or better yet, national."REV. IRA J. ACREE, on a city that has strict firearms restrictions but is still plagued by gun violence

Funny how all the backwards red states with high rates of gun ownership don't have Chicago's murder problems. Strange how that works.

For another thread perhaps, what I intended with 'America's Inner City', but most of what is wrong in inner Chicago has nothing to do with gun laws either way. Yes, guns laws have left the law abiding and the innocent unarmed and exacerbated the crisis, but the shootings - the willingness to kill and risk life in prison and to be killed yourself at the rate of over 500 per year(!) - has to do with a cultural problem caused by multi-generational government inference in the finances and structure of the family more than by anything else IMHO.

An adult male, who does not have the responsibility of helping raise and support his family, to get to bed early and set an alarm clock for work, will go do what? Almost anything. Gang, drug, street fight, armed robbery, turf war, murders, yes. Start a white collar investment company that caters to all the thriving and growing small businesses in the neighborhood and marry his college sweatheart? Probably not, if those of you further away from these neighborhoods have seen the youtubes of the cultural climate their.

The murders are the symptom of the dysfunction, not the cause or the main problem.

The 500+ per year murders in just one, out of control city are in a different category of crime IMO than the mental health related, mass, copycat shootings of strangers for final attention that started this current, anti-2nd amendment, ball rolling.

For another thread perhaps, what I intended with 'America's Inner City', but most of what is wrong in inner Chicago has nothing to do with gun laws either way. Yes, guns laws have left the law abiding and the innocent unarmed and exacerbated the crisis, but the shootings - the willingness to kill and risk life in prison and to be killed yourself at the rate of over 500 per year(!) - has to do with a cultural problem caused by multi-generational government inference in the finances and structure of the family more than by anything else IMHO.

An adult male, who does not have the responsibility of helping raise and support his family, to get to bed early and set an alarm clock for work, will go do what? Almost anything. Gang, drug, street fight, armed robbery, turf war, murders, yes. Start a white collar investment company that caters to all the thriving and growing small businesses in the neighborhood and marry his college sweatheart? Probably not, if those of you further away from these neighborhoods have seen the youtubes of the cultural climate their.

The murders are the symptom of the dysfunction, not the cause or the main problem.

The 500+ per year murders in just one, out of control city are in a different category of crime IMO than the mental health related, mass, copycat shootings of strangers for final attention that started this current, anti-2nd amendment, ball rolling.

I would add twin problems of multgenerational government interference both on the welfare/assistance front, and on the backend, by generations of incarceration, crime and poverty, resulting from those communities being heavily targeted for enforcement of the nations drug laws. Whether one believes in the objectives of the 'war on drugs' or not, one is forced to acknowledge that the unintended consequences is generations of inner-city youth left to be reared by single-mothers while their fathers, uncles, and brothers have been indoctrinated into a violent prison gang culture, cycling in and out of incarceration, and bringing that culture of violence to the next generation of males, who's only view of male role models are those same men who have been reared in violent prison culture.

If we're looking at one single factor that explains why the US has 3 times the homicide rate of the UK, for example, we must plant it squarely at the feet of unintended consequences for American drug control policies.......Likely 75% of all US homicides are directly or indirectly a result of the illegal drug trade.....Likely an even higher percentage of the homicides in Chicago, for example.

My brother, Nathan Haddad, is not only a decorated combat veteran, but models the character qualities that make him the kind of man who goes out of his way to help his fellow man and other veterans ((http://www.drum.army.mil/mountaineer/Article.aspx?ID=6283). He would not knowingly do anything against the law, compromise his faith and deeply rooted principles, or jeopardize his rights guaranteed by our Constitution. On Sunday January 6th he was arrested for possession of five, 30 round empty magazines that he believed were pre-ban magazines when he purchased them. Meanwhile, in Washington D.C, David Gregory of NBC news doesn’t even get a slap on the hand for a similar offense when he held up one on National TV during a newscast. My brother was medically discharged after 12 years of service and does not have the funds necessary needed for Attorney fees, and unless he has adequate defense and gets his charges reduced, he is not going to get the same treatment that David Gregory, a rich, white, liberal, media mogul got. This is a travesty! Please, anybody and everybody, would you be willing to donate to our fund to help support my brother? Below are some additional websites that will attest to the reason why my brother is deserving of your help. Thank you very much! Michael Haddad

Unfortunately is does appear that many on the left are looking to establish a universal gun registry and to use it, as was the case in Australia and Great Britain, to disarm the American people. Unlike Australia and GB, many here will fight should such become the case. No matter who wins, such a thing would be terrible.

Our Founding Fathers gave us a republic, in the words of Ben Franklin "If we can keep it". Folks, take the time to ACT now via our political process. I've reupped for the NRA and joined the Gun Owners of America. Although I think he sometimes overdoes it in order to raise money, Sen. Rand Paul has my attention as someone who seems to be genuine in the cause of freedom.

Reports out of Capitol Hill reveal that just-reelected turncoat West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is about to stick a big knife in the back of American gun owners. And to make matters worse, he's lying about what he’s doing.

Both Manchin and House anti-gun crazy Carolyn McCarthy are claiming to be “working with NRA” to enact gun bans and national gun registries. NRA says flatly that Manchin is lying, and we believe he is. (The Hill, 1/24/13)

Ironically, Manchin was the “gun owner's best friend” on November 5 -- the day before his reelection to a six-year term let him to pull a great big “gotcha” on those West Virginians who were tricked into believing his representations.

But make no mistake about it: Joe Manchin’s draft would impose a gun ban on veterans and would set up the framework for a national gun registry.

150,000 honest law-abiding veterans are currently in the NICS system. They didn’t do anything wrong; they honorably served their country. But when they sought VA counseling for a traumatic combat experience, the VA appointed a fiduciary to oversee their fiscal affairs and then took away their guns. And, again, there are 150,000 honest veterans in the system.

New York Senator Charles Schumer viciously fought a Coburn amendment on the DoD bill which would require that veterans get their day in court before their rights were taken away from them, and he won.

What the Manchin bill is about is insuring that “bad guys” like veterans can’t get guns. And, under Barack Obama's “Executive Action #1,” the NICS list could soon include tens of millions of additional soldiers, police, firemen, and other law-abiding Americans.

But veteran disarmament is not the only problem with Joe Manchin’s gun ban.

Manchin's bill would set the framework for a national gun registry and impose a chokehold on gun sales. There are at least four big reasons for this:

FIRST: Every gun owner in the country would have a “Form 4473.” Increasingly, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives are going into gun dealerships and illegally copying all of those 4473's.

SECOND: The FBI refuses to tell us how or whether it's complying with federal law by destroying the Brady Check names, rather than keeping them for a national gun registry.

THIRD: As it is, the Brady Check system is breaking down on days such as last year’s Black Friday -- outlawing all gun purchases. If you have to drive 200 miles from your farm to sell your gun to your neighbor, this effectively outlaws any efforts to sell or buy a gun.

FOURTH: Increasingly, the FBI is blocking transfers because someone’s name is “similar” to someone else. When the legal purchaser complains, the FBI's response is “Sue us!”

Gun Owners of America________________________________________Vote Now on theUniversal Background Check!

If any item on the Obama gun agenda passes, it would be a universal background check requirement. Under this provision, every gun transaction -- dealer or private -- would be subject to a Brady Check.

GOA has argued that the universal background check is tantamount to a universal gun registry because:

(1) The FBI will keep the Brady Check records, and

(2) The ATF will copy the 4473's, as it's currently doing.

Moreover, gun owners hate registration systems because they frequently serve as a prelude to gun confiscation -- as GOA has documented time and time again.

In addition, with WalMart and other sellers refusing to complete any gun sale until FBI affirmatively gives a green-light go-ahead, GOA fears system breakdowns and an increasing number of transactions which will be permanently blocked this way once the universal background check is adopted.

On the other side of the argument, Barack Obama argues that the universal background check will not result in a gun registry. Obama claims that a vast majority of gun owners support this and that sales will be completed quickly and easily -- and that checking all gun purchases will increase public safety.

Which side are you on?

Click here and go to the front page of GOA’s website to vote "yes" if you support Obama's universal background check or "no" if you oppose it.

A spate of recent incidents in which schoolchildren were punished for incidents triggering the hysteria of politically correct school officials highlights the left’s increasing insanity about guns.

A five-year-old girl from Pennsylvania was suspended from school last month after telling a friend she was going to shoot her with a pink toy gun that sprays bubbles. Despite not even having the bubble gun with her at the time of the shockingly dire threat, the kindergartener was later interrogated by school officials without her parents present. She was ultimately – are you sitting down for this? – labeled a “terrorist threat,” suspended for ten days, and required to undergo psychiatric evaluation.

At about the same time, a school in Maryland suspended two six-year-olds for making a gun gesture with their hands while playing cops-and-robbers during recess. Two weeks before that, another six-year-old was suspended for the same terrorist offense. This idiocy is reminiscent of an incident last year in which a deaf three-year-old was informed by school district officials that the signing he uses for his name too closely resembles him waving a gun. So now he is required to spell out his name letter by letter instead. That’ll teach him.

The insanity continues. Now a seven-year-old Colorado boy has been suspended for throwing a pretend grenade at a pretend box full of “evil forces” while playing “rescue the world” at recess. Again, that’s a pretend grenade he lobbed at a pretend box of evil (good thing he didn’t refer to it as an “axis of evil,” or the officials might have tarred and feathered the kid and run him and his Bush-loving parents out of town). His school maintains a list of “absolutes,” no-nos designed to keep the schoolgrounds safe, which includes “no fighting, real or imaginary; no weapons, real or imaginary.” Because it isn’t enough to ban students from playing with real weapons; it must be verboten even to think about them, even when combating evil.

Alex Evans said he threw the fake grenade “so nothing can get out and destroy the world… I was trying to save people and I just can’t believe I got dispended.” Alex, that’s because you’re not far enough along in school yet to have been sufficiently indoctrinated by your schoolteachers. In a few years, once you’ve absorbed enough Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, you will understand that we are the ones destroying the world through our imperialistic war-mongering and racist theft of natural resources. However, had you thrown an imaginary grenade at an imaginary band of violent Tea Partiers, you would have gone to the head of the class.

In an article that contains more handwringing about how guns are poisoning our children’s minds, The New York Times reports on groups of “anti-toy-gun activists” (now there’s a pathetic label) who encourage exchanges in which toys like Hula Hoops are given to children who turn in their toy guns – a sort of children’s version of firearm buybacks like the one that disarmed Australians back in the 90s. One of those is the California group Alliance for Survival, whose coordinator Jerry Rubin explains, “No one is saying that if you play with a toy gun, you’re going to grow up to be a violent killer.” No? Then why ban toy guns? Because “the game is still the same: pretend to kill your friends, pretend to kill your classmates.” Except that kids aren’t pretending to kill their friends and schoolmates; they’re pretending to kill the bad guys. Anti-toy gun activists like Rubin can’t comprehend that this might be healthy practice for when these children grow up and one day have to confront uncompromising evil in the real world.

This is all part of the radical left’s determination to make pariahs out of American gun owners, even if those guns dispense nothing more dangerous than bubbles or a deaf boy’s name. As the totalitarian hypocrite Eric Holder said at the Women’s National Democratic Club years ago, American youth need to be “brainwashed” into thinking negatively about guns. In fact, he urges kids to report gun owners to authorities, so be careful who knows you have a legally purchased and registered handgun, all you law-abiding moms and dads. You might find yourselves betrayed to the government by your own children, just like during China’s Cultural Revolution. “I’ve also asked the school board to make a part of every day some kind of anti-violence, anti-gun message,” Holder said, “every day, every school, at every level… We need to do this every day of the week and really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”

This is the Attorney General who funneled guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, resulting in hundreds of murders. He is part of an administration that turns a blind eye to gun violence committed in this country by leftists or Islamic terrorists like the Fort Hood shooter, whose massacre was labeled “workplace violence” (as opposed to the kindergartner who was called a terrorist threat). The Obama administration cares about a tragedy like Sandy Hook only insofar as it is a crisis they don’t want to let go to waste. The administration says nothing about the ongoing handgun massacre of children in tightly gun-restricted Chicago, because it doesn’t fit their “ban guns to save the children” narrative, and because, quite frankly, they don’t care about saving the children anyway. What they care about is disarming the American populace. Their obsession with gun control is about big-government gun confiscation, not gun crime prevention, just as their demonization of guns in the minds of schoolchildren is also about disarming Americans and molding a generation of defenseless pacifists.

This hatred of guns is ragingly irrational. The left wants to indoctrinate upcoming generations into believing that, in any and all circumstances, guns – even imaginary ones; even a pointed index finger – are the apotheosis of violent evil. And yet the Obama administration has now opened the door to combat for women in the military. How are those women – and our young men too, for that matter – supposed to deal with that disconnect, when from kindergarten onward they are relentlessly brainwashed to despise guns, and yet are now expected to go into combat and kill the enemy?

And then of course there is the hypocrisy of left-leaning Hollywood, which inundates young people with violent imagery and then pats itself on the back with smugly self-righteous public service messages calling for immediate political solutions to gun violence.

The left does not want American citizens to own guns – it’s that simple. And they want to shape our children into a helpless citizenry that entrusts its protection to the well-armed nanny state. They care nothing about the right of Americans to protect their homes, schools and loved ones from home invaders or burglars or rapists. They care least of all about our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms to oppose a tyrannical government, because that right stands in the way of the radical left’s tyrannical ambitions.

« Last Edit: February 12, 2013, 09:20:55 AM by objectivist1 »

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Second Amendment Foundation12500 NE Tenth Place • Bellevue, WA 98005(425) 454-7012 • FAX (425) 451-3959 • www.saf.org7TH CIRCUIT LETS POSNER RULING STAND; HUGE WIN FOR CCW, SAYS SAF For Immediate Release: 2/22/2013BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today won a significant victory for concealed carry when the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals let stand a December ruling by a three-judge panel of the court that forces Illinois to adopt a concealed carry law, thus affirming that the right to bear arms exists outside the home.

The ruling came in Moore v. Madigan, a case filed by SAF. The December opinion that now stands was written by Judge Richard Posner, who gave the Illinois legislature 180 days to “craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment…on the carrying of guns in public.” That clock is ticking, noted SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb.

“Illinois lawmakers need to create some kind of licensing system or face the prospect of not having any regulations at all when Judge Posner’s deadline arrives,” Gottlieb said. “They need to act. They can no longer run and hide from this mandate.”

“We were delighted with Judge Posner’s ruling in December,” he continued, “and today’s decision by the entire circuit to allow his ruling to stand is a major victory, and not just for gun owners in Illinois. Judge Posner’s ruling affirmed that the right to keep and bear arms, itself, extends beyond the boundary of one’s front door.”

In December, Judge Posner wrote, “The right to ‘bear’ as distinct from the right to ‘keep’ arms is unlikely to refer to the home. To speak of ‘bearing’ arms within one’s home would at all times have been an awkward usage. A right to bear arms thus implies a right to carry a loaded gun outside the home.”

Judge Posner subsequently added, “To confine the right to be armed to the home is to divorce the Second Amendment from the right of self-defense described in Heller and McDonald.”

“It is now up to the legislature,” Gottlieb said, “to craft a statute that recognizes the right of ordinary citizens to carry outside the home, without a sea of red tape or a requirement to prove any kind of need beyond the cause of personal protection.”

The ruling also affects a similar case filed by the National Rifle Association known as Shepard v. Madigan.

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation's oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control. In addition to the landmark McDonald v. Chicago Supreme Court Case, SAF has previously funded successful firearms-related suits against the cities of Los Angeles; New Haven, CT; New Orleans; Chicago and San Francisco on behalf of American gun owners, a lawsuit against the cities suing gun makers and numerous amicus briefs holding the Second Amendment as an individual right.

A leaked internal memo from the National Institute of Justice--the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice--shows that none of Obama's gun proposals will work without registration and forced buybacks amounting to confiscation of Americans' guns.The memo illustrates this by showing why high capacity magazine bans, gun buybacks, and "assault weapons" bans have failed to work in the past.

For example, according to the memo, the high capacity magazine bans that were in place from 1994-2004 had little impact because the bans contained too many exemptions. The memo says one of the key errors was that "the 1994 ban exempted magazines made before 1994 so that the importation of large capacity magazines manufactured before 1994 continued [throughout] the ban."

Moreover, the memo points out that while the price of the magazines rose sharply, it was not driven up far enough to make them "unaffordable."

According to the memo, for a high capacity magazine ban to succeed Obama needs to ban not only the manufacture and sale of said magazines, but also the importation and possession. There also must be a federal buyback of all high capacity magazines already in circulation to ensure private owners haven't held on to any covered by the ban.

Regarding gun buybacks, the memo says they have also been ineffective "as generally implemented." Because such buybacks have been voluntary, they have been "too small," have resulted in the surrender of guns that are rarely used in crime, and have removed guns that are easily replaceable.

The memo intimates that the corrective for such ineffective buybacks are non-voluntary buybacks that are targeted at the kinds of weapons used in crime.

Lastly, the memo says the first "assault weapons" ban failed to work for many of the same reasons magazine bans and gun buybacks failed to work--there was simply too much wiggle room for gun owners. Moreover, the memo says that because "assault weapons" are used in such a low percentage of crimes, the only way a ban can be effective is if it eliminates every "assault weapon" in the country.

According to the memo, the only way to fix it is to couple a ban with "a gun buyback and no exemptions."

Anyone who fails to understand that we are dealing with a tyrannical government with Obama and his administration is either ignorant or a fool or both. Unfortunately, the Republican leadership appears to feel that there is no political upside to opposing this president. We are living in ominous times.

« Last Edit: February 26, 2013, 09:30:24 PM by objectivist1 »

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Federal Court Finds No Constitutional Right to Carry a Concealed Weapon — We Explain The DecisionFeb. 25, 2013 3:01pm

Mytheos Holt While gun rights supporters might like to think the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is an absolute guarantee against government interference, according to at least one (relatively conservative) appeals court, they are severely mistaken. In fact, according to that same court, when it comes to carrying concealed weapons, the Second Amendment is basically irrelevant.Last Friday, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its decision in the case of Peterson v. Martinez, a case involving the question of whether a state has an obligation to provide a concealed carry license to anyone who has been granted such a license in another state. Their answer was, to put it mildly, “no.”In fact, the court adopted a fairly novel approach in explaining why the right to keep and bear arms didn’t apply in this case: Rather than rely solely on precedent that restricted gun rights, they built most of their analysis on language from cases that expanded gun rights, but still made clear that there were limits, of which concealed carry was certainly one. As Lawyers.com’s Larry Bodine put it, “To bullet-proof the ruling against an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the 10th Circuit recounted numerous court rulings and state laws dating back to 1813, and based its ruling on prior U.S. Supreme Court cases.”Still, given which judges ended up deciding the case, this approach may be less surprising than it first appears. While the decision was written by Judge Carlos Lucero, a Clinton appointee, all three judges voted unanimously against the right to concealed carry, which may surprise some, given that one (Judge Bobby Ray Baldock) was a Reagan appointee, and the other (Judge Harriz Hartz) was a nominee by the second President Bush, neither of whom were presidents known for nominating liberal judges.So why did they decide the way they did? To understand that, one needs to first understand a little about the case, and about court precedent regarding the Second Amendment.The CaseThe person bringing the case was one Gray Peterson, a resident of Washington state, who possessed concealed carry permits both in Washington and in Florida. Peterson frequently visited the Denver, Colorado area, and in so doing, wished to carry a firearm with him at all times. However, the city of Denver currently bans open carry of firearms, which means Peterson would need to get a concealed carry license from the state in order to carry his weapon in most situations.Fortunately, Colorado did have a program for recognizing the concealed carry licenses of other states. The problem for Peterson was that Colorado only recognized concealed carry licenses from states that also recognized concealed carry licenses from Colorado. In other words, if a state wouldn’t recognize Colorado’s concealed carry licenses, Colorado wouldn’t recognize theirs. Neither Florida nor Washington state recognized Colorado’s concealed carry licenses, so Peterson was out of luck.Worse, he couldn’t apply for a license on his own merits, because Colorado would only grant new licenses to Colorado residents, not people from out of state. In other words, there was literally no way for Peterson to get a concealed carry license in Colorado unless he moved. So, claiming he needed to carry a firearm with him, Peterson sued to get the law banning out of state residents from getting Colorado-issued concealed carry licenses struck down, claiming it violated his Second Amendment rights.The court disagreed. Why? Because when it comes to the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms is far less absolute than many people might like to think.

The Limits of the Second AmendmentAs we previously covered at TheBlaze, the right to keep and bear arms is more extensive than many liberals would like to think, and more limited than many conservatives would like to think. At the time, we wrote this about the legal realities regarding the Second Amendment (emphasis added):For now, at least, the legal reality regarding the Second Amendment is that it does guarantee a right to keep and bear arms of some kind to individual citizens. Barring a massive shift in power on the court, this is unlikely to change, as five of the sitting justices voted to hold that the right exists and protects citizens against both state and federal law in the two cases cited above.Moreover, even cases that the majority of justice disagree with are not always changed after the fact, given the varying attitudes of various jurists towards the importance of upholding precedent. For the foreseeable future, therefore, the right to keep and bear arms is a fixed reality of the American legal and constitutional landscape.However, in practice, this tells us very little about how far that right extends, which is where the current (and future) legal debate is likely to focus. A right to own a handgun is one thing, after all, but what about the right to own rocket launchers? Miniguns? Anti-tank ordinance? An actual, physical tank? Are all of these things protected by the right to keep and bear arms? They are, after all, arms.Fortunately for those worrying about their neighbors acquiring weapons grade helicopters, even the most stringent supporters of gun rights admit that the law allows for limits on what sort of weapons are protected, or on how those weapons might be obtained. For his part, Scalia would limit the amendment solely to weapons that can be carried by an individual human being, knocking such armaments as tanks and missiles out of contention, and admitted in the majority decision in Heller that regulations such as background checks and concealed carry permits almost certainly pass constitutional muster.This, as it turns out, is precisely the reasoning that the Court ended up using in this case. From Judge Lucero’s decision [emphasis added]:With respect to Peterson’s claims against the Denver sheriff, we conclude that the carrying of concealed firearms is not protected by the Second Amendment or the Privileges and Immunities Clause. In Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275 (1897), the Supreme Court stated in dicta that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms is not infringed by laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons.” More recently, in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Court noted that “the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues,” and explained that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions.” Id. at 626. In light of our nation’s extensive practice of restricting citizens’ freedom to carry firearms in a concealed manner, we hold that this activity does not fall within the scope of the Second Amendment’s protections.Part of the issue at work here is that the Supreme Court’s decision to grant the right to keep and bear arms the same legal status as more longstanding rights like the right to free speech has been exceedingly recent (the two cases that established this precedent, District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, were handed down in 2008 and 2010, respectively), and thus there is much less clarity about where that “right” begins and ends. The 10th circuit court explicitly acknowledged this:In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Supreme Court held “that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.” And in McDonald v. City of Chicago, 130 S. Ct. 3020 (2010), the Court concluded that “the Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States.” Nevertheless, the Court has provided precious little guidance with respect to the standard by which restrictions on the possession of firearms should be assessed.In Heller, the Court determined that the challenged statute, which completely barred possession of handguns in the home and required that any lawful firearm be kept in an inoperable condition, failed “nder any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights.” The Court rejected application of rational-basis scrutiny, but declined to select another standard. However, the Court stressed that its opinion should not be read to “cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,” which the Court identified as “presumptively lawful regulatory measures.”However, while the Supreme Court has proposed no method by which to gauge whether a restriction runs afoul of the Second Amendment, the 10th circuit court itself apparently does have a precedent, elucidated in the case United States v. Reese. The 10th Circuit specifically applied what the decision calls a “two-pronged approach” to Second Amendment claims. In other words, when assessing such claims, the court asks two questions:1. Does the challenged law “impose a burden on conduct falling within the scope of the Second Amendment’s guarantee?” If not, the law is constitutional.2. If so, does the law pass muster under a “means-end” test, IE does it pursue a constitutionally acceptable end using means that do not fall afoul of any explicit part of the constitution?The court in this case completely avoided the second, more complicated question. Rather, they decided right out the gate that since carrying concealed weapons was not a right the Second Amendment was designed to protect, the law was presumptively constitutional:We agree with the Fifth Circuit that in applying the two-step approach to Second Amendment claims, we consider at the first step “whether the law harmonizes with the historical traditions associated with the Second Amendment guarantee.” As the foregoing demonstrates, concealed carry bans have a lengthy history. Given…the Supreme Court’s admonition in Heller that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions,” we conclude that Peterson’s Second Amendment claim fails at step one of our two-step analysis: the Second Amendment does not confer a right to carry concealed weapons.Nor was it only Heller and McDonald that the court relied on to make its decision. Rather, they used the treatises of the British legal scholar Blackstone (a contemporary of the Founding Fathers, and one of their inspirations), as well as quotations from several cases both in the early and late 19th century to prove that carrying concealed weapons was never a right that even the Founders meant to protect. In short, they wrote a decision with a liberal outcome using conservative reasoning on the limits of the Second Amendment. However, that is unlikely to be the end of the story.

So What Happens Now?It is at this point that many gun rights supporters must be feeling nervous. After all, if a state can set up its concealed carry laws and open carry laws such that a citizen literally cannot carry their weapon in particular circumstances, surely that means the right to keep and bear arms is something of a formality.Fortunately for these people, there are several factors that make that problem less pressing. Firstly, this case only applies to areas where the 10th Circuit Court has jurisdiction – specifically, Colorado, Kansas, most of Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming, and may not even apply there, given that an appeal will almost certainly come out of the case, given that it directly contradicts another decision by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.Secondly, the court in this case did not rule that bans on open carry are constitutional (and, in fact, noted with some bewilderment that Peterson had not challenged the open carry statute in the decision), simply that there is no “right” to carry a concealed weapon implied by the Second Amendment. Again, other Circuit Courts differ with this assessment, and the Supreme Court will almost certainly be asked to step in.For now, however, concealed carry licenses are a privilege, not a right.http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/25/federal-court-finds-no-constitutional-right-to-carry-a-concealed-weapon-we-explain-the-decision/

U.S. Gun Laws Retroactively Barred This Vietnam Vet From Owning a Firearm Because of a Teenage Misdemeanor 45 Years Ago

Feb. 26, 2013 8:52am Becket Adams

A 19-year-old sailor stationed in Annapolis, Md., in 1968 was arrested for getting into a fight with an alleged member of a street gang.

Now, 45 years later, he has been stripped of his right to own a gun.

Jefferson Wayne Schrader, 64, has been fighting a losing battle in the courts since 2008 to get his name off the fed’s firearm ban list. In fact, just last month, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., upheld a lower-court ruling barring the U.S. Navy veteran from Cleveland, Ga., from owning a firearm.

“It’s a depressing thing. A depressing thing,” he told TheBlaze in a phone interview, “to have the government treat you like that. It’s not, well, it’s not a good thing.”

The ban list is meant to prevent people of questionable standing, including illegal aliens, drug addicts, people dishonorably discharged from the U.S. military, and fugitives, from buying or selling guns.

And although Schrader — a certified expert with a handgun — served in Vietnam from Jan. 1, 1968, until being honorably discharged in September 1970, the U.S. government believes he is unfit to own a gun because of his teenage misdemeanor.

“Due to a conviction some forty years ago for common-law misdemeanor assault and battery for which he served no jail time, plaintiff Jefferson Wayne Schrader, now a sixty-four-year-old veteran, is, by virtue of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), barred for life from ever possessing a firearm,” U.S. Circuit Judge David Tatel wrote in the court’s January opinion.

“In rejecting plaintiffs’ constitutional claim, the district court relied on the Supreme Court’s observation in District of Columbia v. Heller … that ‘the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,’ as well as the Court’s inclusion of ‘longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons’ within a list of ‘presumptively lawful regulatory measures,’” Judge Tatel added.

In its ruling against Schrader, the fed appeals court cited the Gun Control Act of 1968 signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, which makes it more difficult for questionable characters to engage in interstate commerce involving firearms.

But we’ll come back to that later.

The other gun law that led to Schrader’s odd set of circumstances is the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993. This bill laid the groundwork for the FBI’s 1998 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

So when Schrader tried to buy a handgun in 2008, the NICS flagged his 45-year-old misdemeanor – which only now qualifies in Maryland for a sentence of two or more years in prison – and he was disqualified from making the purchasing.

But here’s the weird thing: Schrader has been selling and trading guns for a long time.

“I’ve bought and sold probably, oh, a dozen … maybe 15 guns over a 42 year time period” he said. “I never had a problem with it. I was just surprised it happened at all. The ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] agent said I wasn’t allowed to have any guns.”

“But he said I could keep my black powder rifle. Thank you very much,” he added sarcastically.

TROUBLE

As mentioned in the above, it all started in 2008 when an NICS check flagged Schrader’s name for his 1968 misdemeanor.

The FBI blocked Schrader’s wife, Harriet, from buying him a shotgun for his birthday and then blocked him on two different occasions from buying a handgun.

But let’s back up for a second and revisit his 1968 misdemeanor.

As Schrader told TheBlaze, one evening in Annapolis he and his Navy buddies were attacked by a street gang while walking back to base. A few weeks later, Schrader saw one of his attackers hanging out on a street corner.

“I told the guy driving to stop and let me out,” Schrader said, “and I walked over to him and was going to tell him, ‘You need to come with me, we’re going to talk you over to the police station.’ And he said, ‘Oh, you want some more?’ and stood up.”

As official court documents show, “a dispute broke out between the two, in the course of which Schrader punched his assailant.”

Unfortunately for Schrader, he didn’t see the two police officers “sitting at the red light.”

The sailor was arrested and convicted of common-law assault and battery. He was told he could pay a $109 fine, which included court costs, or spend thirty days in the hole.

He chose the former.

After paying the fine, Schrader went on to serve a 21-month tour of duty in Vietnam and was honorably discharged upon his return.

>From that time forward, according to the complaint, he had no scrapes with the law (except for one traffic violation).

REASON FOR THE BAN

After going more than five decades without any serious trouble with the law, the 2008 background check came as a shock to Schrader.

“I don’t know why they’re coming after me,” Schrader said. “All I did was punch someone in the nose.”So what’s the court’s reasoning?

The Gun Control Act (remember we said we’d come back to this?) specifically includes a ban on anyone convicted of a misdemeanor punishable under state law by up to two years in prison.

Okay, but Schrader never had to serve a two-year prison sentence.

This is where it gets interesting. At the time of his arrest, the state of Maryland did not set any maximum sentence for common-law assault and battery convictions.

However, the DOJ reasons that because Maryland would have given him two or more years if it had the laws it has today, well, that’s good enough to keep Schrader on the banned list.

TODAY

Two years after having his name flagged for the Annapolis fight, Schrader sued to challenge the ban and he has been fighting it ever since. Unfortunately, things haven’t gone his way.

“All I can do now is wait and see what my attorney can do,” Schrader told TheBlaze.

His lawyer, Alan Gura, a prominent civil rights attorney, says there are still a few options left.

“Today is our deadline for filing a petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc in the Schrader case,” Gura told TheBlaze in an email on Monday.

“Some misdemeanors are very serious and Congress can address those specifically,” he added later in a phone interview, “but to broadly disarm anyone who has ever been involved in even a minor scuffle, 45 years later, seems to be excessive.”

“We hope that the court rehears the case. We think it’s worthy of that. It raises the types of questions that courts often find they need to rehear. If the court does not decide to reconsider the case then, of course, we will consider the next step, which will be a petition to the Supreme Court.”

A spokeswoman with the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to TheBlaze’s request for comment.

Here’s the full case: Schrader v. Holder, 11-cv-5352, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia:

A recurring question that we are asked, not only by gun control advocates, but even by a number of gun owners is, "What's wrong with mandatory gun registration?" Usually by the time we finish telling them about the Supreme Court decision U.S. v. Haynes (1968), they are laughing -- and they understand our objection to registration.

In Haynes v. U.S. (1968), a Miles Edward Haynes appealed his conviction for unlawful possession of an unregistered short-barreled shotgun. [1] His argument was ingenious: since he was a convicted felon at the time he was arrested on the shotgun charge, he could not legally possess a firearm. Haynes further argued that for a convicted felon to register a gun, especially a short-barreled shotgun, was effectively an announcement to the government that he was breaking the law. If he did register it, as 26 U.S.C. sec.5841 required, he was incriminating himself; but if he did not register it, the government would punish him for possessing an unregistered firearm -- a violation of 26 U.S.C. sec.5851. Consequently, his Fifth Amendment protection against self- incrimination ("No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself") was being violated -- he would be punished if he registered it, and punished if he did not register it. While the Court acknowledged that there were circumstances where a person might register such a weapon without having violated the prohibition on illegal possession or transfer, both the prosecution and the Court acknowledged such circumstances were "uncommon." [2] The Court concluded:

We hold that a proper claim of the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination provides a full defense to prosecutions either for failure to register a firearm under sec.5841 or for possession of an unregistered firearm under sec.5851. [3] This 8-1 decision (with only Chief Justice Earl Warren dissenting) is, depending on your view of Fifth Amendment, either a courageous application of the intent of the self-incrimination clause, or evidence that the Supreme Court had engaged in reductio ad absurdum of the Fifth Amendment. Under this ruling, a person illegally possessing a firearm, under either federal or state law, could not be punished for failing to register it. [4]

Consider a law that requires registration of firearms: a convicted felon can not be convicted for failing to register a gun, because it is illegal under Federal law for a felon to possess a firearm; but a person who can legally own a gun, and fails to register it, can be punished. In short, the person at whom, one presumes, such a registration law is aimed, is the one who cannot be punished, and yet, the person at whom such a registration law is not principally aimed (i.e., the law-abiding person), can be punished.

This is especially absurd for the statute under which Haynes was tried -- the National Firearms Act of 1934. This law was originally passed during the Depression, when heavily armed desperadoes roamed the nation, robbing banks and engaging in kidnap for ransom. The original intent of the National Firearms Act was to provide a method for locking up ex-cons that the government was unable to convict for breaking any other law. As Attorney General Homer Cummings described the purpose of the law, when testifying before Congress:

Now, you say that it is easy for criminals to get weapons. I know it, but I want to make it easy to convict them when they have the weapons. That is the point of it. I do not expect criminals to comply with this law; I do not expect the underworld to be going around giving their fingerprints and getting permits to carry these weapons, but I want them to be in a position, when I find such a person, to convict him because he has not complied. During the same questioning, Cummings expressed his belief that, "I have no fear of the law-abiding citizen getting into trouble." Rep. Fred Vinson of Kentucky, while agreeing with Cummings' desire to have an additional tool for locking up gangsters, pointed out that many laws that sounded like good ideas when passed, were sometimes found "in the coolness and calmness of retrospect" to be somewhat different in their consequences. [5]

Unfortunately, Rep. Vinson's concern about law-abiding people running afoul of registration laws, while criminals run free, turned out to be prophetic. The same year as the Haynes decision, the New York City Gun Control Law was challenged in the courts. The statute sought to bring shotguns and rifles under the same sort of licensing restrictions as handguns. Edward Grimm and a number of others filed suit against the City of New York, seeking to overturn the city ordinance. Grimm, et. al., raised a number of objections to the law during the trial, most of which were based on the Second Amendment. After the trial but before the decision had been completed, the Haynes decision appeared. Grimm's attorneys pointed out the implications for New York City's gun registration requirement. The trial court held that the legislative intent of the law was:

that there existed an evil in the misuse of rifles and shotguns by criminals and persons not qualified to use these weapons and that the ease with which the weapons could be obtained was of concern... [6] Yet on the subject of the Haynes decision:

In this court's reading of the Haynes decision, it is inapposite to the statute under consideration here. The registration requirement in Haynes was "...directed principally at those persons who have obtained possession of a firearm without complying with the Act's other requirements, and who therefore are immediately threatened by criminal prosecutions... They are unmistakably persons 'inherently suspect of criminal activities.'"... The City of New York's Gun Control Law is not aimed at persons inherently suspect of criminal activities. It is regulatory in nature. Accordingly, Haynes does not stand as authority for plaintiffs' position. [7] In three pages, the court went from claiming that the registration law was intended to stop "an evil in the misuse of rifles and shotguns by criminals" to admitting that it was "not aimed at persons inherently suspect of criminal activities."

Nor is Grimm an exceptional case. A number of other judicial decisions have upheld gun registration laws, specifically because they did not apply to criminals, but only to law-abiding citizens. During the turbulent late 1960s, Toledo, Ohio, passed an ordinance that required handgun owners to obtain an identification card. [8] The plaintiffs attacked the law on a number of points, [9] including the issue of self-incrimination. Regarding the Fifth Amendment, the Court of Common Pleas asserted that application for a handgun owner's identification card (effectively, registration of gun owners) did not make a person "inherently suspect of criminal activities." (This quotation suggests the judge writing this opinion was aware of the Haynes decision, although not cited.) The court pointed out that unless the plaintiffs had been prohibited persons within the Toledo ordinance, the Fifth Amendment would have provided them no protection. Only criminals were protected from a mandatory registration law -- not law-abiding people.

Later that same year, in the Ohio case State v. Schutzler (1969), Gale Leroy Schutzler attempted to quash an indictment for failure to register a submachine gun in accordance with O.R.C. sec.2923.04, which required registration of automatic weapons. [10] At the original trial, Schutzler argued that the registration requirement violated his Fifth Amendment rights, based on Haynes. On appeal, the Court of Common Pleas did not agree with any of Schutzler's arguments, including his citation of the Fifth Amendment. Where the Haynes decision was based on the fact that Haynes was an ex-felon, and therefore his possession of a sawed-off shotgun was illegal, Schutzler was not breaking the law by possession; his only violation of the law was his failure to register the submachine gun and post a $5000 bond. [11] Had he been an ex-felon, the Haynes decision would have protected him. Because he was not a convicted criminal, he did not receive the benefit of the Fifth Amendment's protection.

In State v. Hamlin (1986), a case involving an unregistered short-barreled shotgun, the Louisiana Supreme Court refused to apply the Haynes precedent, because the Louisiana statute specifically prohibited the government from using registration information to prosecute convicted felons in possession of a firearm. The Louisiana registration law had been "sanitized" in a manner similar to the 1968 revision to the National Firearms Act, 26 U.S.C. sec.5801, which required that no information obtained from gun registration could be used against a person who could not legally possess a gun -- convicted felons could register their machine guns or short-barreled shotguns with complete confidence that they would not be prosecuted for illegal possession. [12]

If mandatory gun registration can't be used to punish ex-felons in possession of a firearm, what purpose does such a law serve? If mandatory gun registration can only be used to punish people that can legally possess a gun, why bother? Because of the Haynes decision, if we want to punish ex-felons who are caught in possession of a gun, there are only two choices available: We must either skip registration, so that we can severely punish gun possession by those who aren't allowed to own guns; or use the "sanitized" form of registration law -- where the criminal is guaranteed that gun registration can't hurt him, while the rest of us can be punished for failure to comply.

It sounds paranoid to suggest that gun registration records might be used in the future to confiscate guns -- although the second director of Handgun Control, Inc. has stated explicitly that mandatory registration is one of the steps towards prohibition of handgun ownership [13] -- but when we examine how the courts have crippled gun registration laws so that felons are effectively exempt, and only law-abiding citizens need to fear such laws, what other explanation can there be for the continuing plea for mandatory gun registration?

Clayton E. Cramer is a software engineer with a telecommunications manufacturer in Northern California. His first book, By The Dim And Flaring Lamps: The Civil War Diary of Samuel McIlvaine, was published in 1990. Rhonda L. Cramer is completing her B.A. in English.

13. Richard Harris, "A Reporter At Large: Handguns", The New Yorker, July, 26, 1976, 57-58. A fascinating interview, Shields also describes the founder of Handgun Control, Inc., as a "retired CIA official" who was its first director -- without pay. For those people who regard the CIA as a secret government with nefarious motives, this will doubtless make them wonder about the origins of Handgun Control's current policies in support of prohibition of those rifles which are most necessary to restrain domestic tyranny.

Oh, puhleeese. That could NEVER happen here in America. No politician would be dumb enough to try that. Then again...This administration is in for a VERY RUDE awakening if they try this - and I am not convinced they won't.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Crafty - I was referring to confiscation. I think you underestimate Obama and his administration - filled with Marxists, anti-Semites and socialist utopians. He will over-reach and face armed resistance if it is tried. I was not suggesting that it would be wise to use this tactic for gun registration or magazine/weapons bans.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

For your consideration. I believe that this man's essential thesis is correct. Obama is a Marxist. This can be demonstrated easily and has been documented quite well by Stanley Kurtz in his book "Radical-in-Chief." If you watch Obama's actions instead of listening to his rhetoric (which at least half of Americans fail to do, unfortunately) his ideology is crystal-clear. See the link below. I no longer think this is far-fetched: